1 Techno-economic study of CO2 capture from natural gas based hydrogen plants

As proven reserves of conventional crude oil are depleting, there is a growing need to develop unconventional oils such as heavy oil and bitumen from oil sands. In terms of recoverable oil, Canadian oil sands are considered to be the second largest oil reserves in the world. However, the upgrading of bitumen from oil sands to synthetic crude oil (SCO) requires nearly ten times more hydrogen (H2) than the conventional crude oils. The current H2 demand for oil sands operations is met mostly by steam reforming of natural gas. With the future expansion of oil sands operations, the demand of H2 for oil sand operations is likely to quadruple in the next decade. As natural gas reforming involves significant carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, this sector is likely to be one of the largest emitters of CO2 in Canada. In the current natural gas reformers, CO2 emissions originate from two sources. One source is the combustion flue gases vented from the steam reformer and the other source is off gas from the process (steam reforming and water-gas shift) reactions. The objective of this study is to develop a process that captures CO2 at minimum energy penalty in modern H2 plants. The approach is to look at the best operating conditions considering the H2 and steam production, CO2 emissions and external fue